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M Wallis

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M Wallis

Tag Archives: Victorian values

HEART of CRUELTY: on ‘romances about brutal men’

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by M Wallis in Historical fiction

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historical fiction, Victorian values

One of my Amazon.com reviewers has written that the ending of HEART of CRUELTY annoyed her so much that she ‘wanted to throw it across the room.’ Spoiler alert: my novel isn’t intended as a standard romance.

In the standard romance – think of a cover featuring large male muscles and a lady in satin – the alpha-male hero is in some kind of conflict situation with a vulnerable yet feisty heroine and the conflict is overtaken by their mutual attraction; they have a big showdown and separation four-fifths of the way through the book, but end up rapturously united.

I’m not doing that, sorry.

Those alpha-male heroes are hugely suspect individuals and if we met them in real life we might want to run a mile. Ruggedly handsome, brutally strong, devoid of self-criticism, they occupy positions of high social status: royalty; aristocrats; billionaires; warlords. It’s arguable that mostly they maintain their roles by exploiting other people. The elegant and leisured lives of Jane Austen’s heroes were dependent on someone else’s labour, whether that was down an English coal mine or on a Jamaican sugar plantation. And however blissful the marriage, a heroine would still have had to make sure that their husband’s socks were washed and their shirts were ironed, even if this was by the servants.

Have you stopped trusting them yet, ladies?

It makes me wonder if these romances are actually a way of trying to persuade women that these stereotypes are desirable. Does the romance fiction genre promote a patriarchal society?

And a further question: does the notion, widespread in fiction, that good must triumph over evil, promote negative judgments of the down-trodden? ‘Loser’ is a favourite Trumpian insult: what if the loser is in fact a victim?

Here’s an extract from HEART of CRUELTY in which I explore these ideas. Doughty is talking to Jane:

‘If you read a work of fiction, or see an opera, or a play at the theatre, is it the hero or the villain that triumphs?’

‘The hero, naturally. Good triumphs over evil. It is the natural order.’ 

‘But our prejudices of the natural order corrupt our view. What I have found at inquests is the difficulty in persuading the jury that the deceased are not villains, but victims. The woman who is cruelly violated and murdered is argued to have provoked her attacker. The abandoned infant is deemed illegitimate, unbaptised, it has no place in society. We withhold pity from the weak and the defeated, and instead we forgive their abusers. I blame the scribblers of novels for this pernicious state of affairs…’  

I wondered whether his mind had been running on what I had told him but could not ask. He was too caught up in his own argument: ‘…Why, some ladies are only content when reading romances about brutal men.’ 

‘Victorian values’

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by M Wallis in Uncategorized

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Victorian values, workhouse

Recently I have had to park in a different place in the hospital where I work, and it was with a sort of grim delight that I photographed these mid Victorian buildings in an obscure corner of the hospital grounds. IMG_0118The remains of the mid-Victorian West Bromwich Union Workhouse infirmary (above is the former ‘Itch and Venereal Ward’) date from around 1857-8.

IMG_0125IMG_0127I suspect that the old iron railings and brick piers fronting onto the street also date from this time.IMG_0129At that time the workhouse and all the trappings of the Poor Law were feared and loathed by many. Victorian values – the work ethic, a stern religiosity and harsh class divisions, in which the ruthless capitalists preyed upon the poor in a laissez-faire economy, have had a bad press. Historians express surprise that England did not tumble into revolution during the 19th century.

But the picture was more complex. In some cities, Birmingham for example, the social divides were narrower, with much manufacturing being in small workshops where a craftsman could easily become an employer, and vice versa. The Birmingham Political Union, in which working class and middle class people campaigned together, was a driving force behind the Reform Act. There grew a concept of civic pride, in which citizens worked together in the newly incorporated towns to build their local infrastructure. And, nationally, there were plenty of people who campaigned for political reform, for education, and for public health. The reason we even know nowadays about the awful living conditions of the poor is that public health campaigners went out and documented what was going on. Read the small ads in the Times in the 1840s and you will find innumerable philanthropic societies; ladies’ knitting circles holding sales of work for charity; the establishment of voluntary organisations, the RNLI for example, that we still hold dear today. The Times editorials will be full of criticism for the plight of the workhouse paupers and the neglect and abuse which they suffered. ‘Victorian values’ were not a single entity, any more than are 21st century political beliefs.

The workhouse infirmaries of the Victorian age evolved into a health service for the poor, and, in the 20th century, became the hospitals that were the foundation of our National Health Service. Across the country, workhouse buildings and land have been used for our modern hospitals, gradually being developed and rebuilt. Could we have had the NHS without the workhouses, or our welfare state without the lessons learned from the Victorian age? I think not.

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For March 2021, The HistWriter ponders the Victorian poisoner Dr William Palmer and reviews Silk by Alessandro Barrico and Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd Robinson. Free pdf download from the HistWriter site at https://buff.ly/3suF3yP

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